"Reflective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... "You are a genius and a duck," she exclaimed; then, after a reflective pause, she murmured, "Very likely he met with an accident ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us only successively the relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, its elements ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... Sicily and Duke of Provence, seems to have been born to misfortune as the sparks fly upward. Had he been endowed with the spirit and courage of his daughter Margaret, Rene might have been able to cope with his enemies; but being of a gentle and reflective nature, he yielded to what he deemed his fate. One possession after another was wrested from him, and he finally retired to Aix in Provence, where he devoted himself to literature and the fine arts, or, as Miss Cassandra expresses ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... to record that Mr. Brumley's mind was full of the intensest sense of Lady Harman during that journey and of nothing else, but as a matter of fact his mind was now curiously detached and reflective, the tensions and expectation of the past month and the astonishment of the last few days had worked themselves out and left him as it were the passive instrument of the purpose of his more impassioned moods. This distressed lover approached Black ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... score of impossible trees, turned midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the Chinese New-year in Canton a drab and sober event in comparison. He hated Flora Desimone, as all Nora's adherents most properly did, but with a hatred wholly reflective ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... new has anything in common with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of Abraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each other, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective and modern minds, I reply that although in certain specifically philosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more properly to be termed religious the development has followed quite another path. The whole history of evangelical Christianity is there to prove it. I propose in these ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... he sat in silence, eyes half closed, lips a bit compressed; a certain sternness, that was always in his countenance, showing plainest when in reflective thought. At last, he smiled. Then he lit another cigarette, took up the letter and the photograph, and put them in the small safe standing behind an ornate screen in the corner—not, however, without another look ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... that springs from the juxtaposition of two thoughts,—a brilliancy like that produced by unblended colors roughly but well laid on. They have, as it were, an organic force which nothing can render. The best of them have the reflective power which gives back light from the mind of the reader. The profounder ones appear to change and glow under contemplation; they re-echo syllables from forgotten voices; they suggest unfathomable ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... moderate means and quiet habits of living, to whom the extreme formalities of the world of fashion will always remain something of an abstraction, and the knowledge of them is not of much practical use except to the few who are reflective enough to infer their own particular rule from any ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... and of awe have presented themselves to all reflective men at all times. They deeply affect the thought, so wholesome and so human, of Homer. They express themselves in that old English pagan's allegory of the bird that flies from the dark into the warm and lighted hall, and from the hall ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... who ever heard of a traitorous lamplighter?); that they commit no crimes against the laws of their country (there being no instance of a murderous or burglarious lamplighter); that they are, in short, notwithstanding their apparently volatile and restless character, a highly moral and reflective people: having among themselves as many traditional observances as the Jews, and being, as a body, if not as old as the hills, at least as old as the streets. It is an article of their creed that the first faint glimmering of true civilisation shone in the first street-light ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... was a very amiable, reflective girl, quiet without being sad, not often indulging in conversation, except when alone with her sister Emma. She was devotedly attached to her uncle and aunt, and was capable of more than she had any idea of herself, for she was of a modest disposition, and thought humbly ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... ready to say, 'All the world is a stage;' or, in the actual words of Plato, 'Let us play as good plays as we can,' though 'we must be sometimes serious, which is not agreeable, but necessary.' These are feelings which have crossed the minds of reflective persons in all ages, and there is no reason to connect the Laws any more than other parts of Plato's writings with the very uncertain narrative of his life, or to imagine that this melancholy tone is attributable to disappointment at having failed ...
— Laws • Plato
... complete, then turns The primal Mover with a smile of joy On such great work of nature, and imbreathes New spirit replete with virtue, that what here Active it finds, to its own substance draws, And forms an individual soul, that lives, And feels, and bends reflective on itself. And that thou less mayst marvel at the word, Mark the sun's heat, how that to wine doth change, Mix'd with the moisture filter'd through the vine. "When Lachesis hath spun the thread, the soul Takes with her both ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... strictly appropriate recognitions rather, as it might seem, of a certain great possibility, which might lie among the conditions of so complex a world. That was a point which could hardly escape so reflective a mind as Gaston's: and at a later period of his life, at the harvest of his own second thoughts, as he pondered on the influence over him of that two-sided thinker, the opinion that things as we find them would bear a certain old-fashioned construction, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... result of a swift process of unconscious reasoning—for he maintained that what we call intuition is but an instantaneous perception of facts and of their inevitable inferences, too rapid for the reflective part ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to bind themselves by law to higher codes than they will live up to if not bound. In their reflective moments, when they are deciding how to vote, temptations are less insistent and ideals stronger than when they are confronting concrete situations. To vote for a law which will restrain others, and incidentally ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to be done soon," said the colonel, who, at the suggestion of his hostess, had lighted a cigarette. He seemed more himself with a cigarette between his fingers to contemplate with a dreamy eye, to turn and twist in reflective idleness. "You will understand that my future movements are uncertain if, as now seems possible, the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... hid her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch of snuff. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... washing the lunch-dishes in a reflective turn of mind which did away with part of the irksomeness of the task, went into the parlor and sat on a stool ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... caressed it. He often kissed the little naked feet the toes of which, covered with a pellicle through which the blood was seen, were like rosebuds. He was passionately fond of the child. When she tried to speak, or when she fixed her beautiful blue eyes upon some object with that serious, reflective look which seems the dawn of thought, and which she ended with a laugh, he would stay by her side for hours, seeking, with Jordy's help, to understand the reasons (which most people call caprices) underlying the phenomena ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... British nation. For one can scarcely suppose a more perfect combination of all the qualities calculated to form a popular Monarch, in this country, than the natural abilities of the Stuart race, perfected under the able guidance of so reflective a ruler—so accomplished a general—so consummate a statesman, as William. The education which that Monarch had planned for the young Duke of Gloucester shows how enlarged and practical were his views of the acquirements necessary ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... not lack information about him. We like him under that air of youthful seriousness; we see upon his face that dawning gravity in which the blossom of feeling already exists, but its plenitude and maturity are still to come. And in attentively examining our personage we are struck with his reflective and searching glance. We seem to have a glimpse in him of an undefined melancholy. This expression surprises us in this man, who ought to be happy at living and who lacks no pleasures that Fortune ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... fact that they have hitherto, in the most enlightened times, terminated their inductive labours by assigning that unity and correlation which science points out in the universe of things to an ordaining intelligence. We repeat, as a matter of experience, it is as rare in this age to find a reflective man who does not read thought in this unity and correlation of material phenomena, as it would have been, in some rube superstitious period, to discover an individual who refused to see, in any one of the specialities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... little folks; gossip, plump nurses, as you scold your soldiers. Embroider peaceably, young mothers, making from time to time a little game of your neighbors among yourselves; and you, reflective idlers, look at that charming picture-babies ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gilded branches. His left arm was resting on the instrument, his chin in his hand, almost concealing his face. He beat the drum slowly with a little stick held in his right hand, and he sat motionless, in a reflective attitude, with his thoughts concentrated on his improvisation, peeping between his fingers at the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for hearing faint ones. To a hand which has for some time carried a heavy body, small bodies afterwards lifted seem to have lost their weight. Now, the truth at once recognized in these, its extreme manifestations, may be traced throughout. It may be shown that alike in the reflective faculties, in the imagination, in the perceptions of the beautiful, the ludicrous, the sublime, in the sentiments, the instincts, in all the mental powers, however we may classify them-action exhausts; and that in proportion as the action ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... could see nothing offensive to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been there—but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology (and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of some poems by some Mr. Gurney where he speaks of 'the reflective wisdom of a Wordsworth and the profound psychological utterances of a Browning') it is hard for you to understand what my mental position is after the peculiar experience I have suffered, and what [Greek: ti emoi ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... quiet little pension in the Rue Paul Bert, in Lyons, but her letters were always despairing. Poor Gabrielle was just the same. She still had no other vista in life than her immediate one, and she still in her reflective moments gave vent to that strange ejaculation of those mysterious words: "Red, green and ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... strong natural sense, who had seen nearly the whole terraqueous globe, and could reason of civilized and savage, of Gentile and Jew, of Christian and Moslem. The long night-watches of the sailor are eminently adapted to draw out the reflective faculties of any serious-minded man, however humble or uneducated. Judge, then, what half a century of battling out watches on the ocean must have done for this fine old tar. He was a sort of a sea-Socrates, in his old age "pouring out his last philosophy and life," as sweet Spenser has it; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... rayless houses, to a certain formal square ghostly with snow-covered statues. Here he ascended the broad steps of a reserved and solid-looking mansion, and pulled a bronze bell-knob, that somewhere within those chaste recesses, after an apparent reflective pause, coldly communicated the fact that a stranger was waiting without—as he ought. Despite the lateness of the hour, there was a slight glow from the windows, clearly not enough to warm the messenger with indications ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he hailed the discovery as a revelation to promote his improvement in the art of painting. On his return soon after to his father's, he had a box made with one of the sides perforated; and, adverting to the reflective power of the mirror, he contrived, without ever having heard of the instrument, to invent the Camera. Thus furnishing another proof, that although the faculty which enables a man to excel in any particular art or science is a natural endowment, it ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... you are good for propaganda," he resumed, tossing away ash with a reflective air. "But even that has no value within four walls. If Noureddin Ali should come and learn from me how much talking has been done in here, and how little done outside, I can imagine he will not be pleased. Are there no other kahawi?* Why is that story about the Zionists and their offer ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Devon. Edward, the wit of the family, went to Pembroke College, and is now a clergyman. George also went to Pembroke. He is in orders likewise, and now has the same School, a very flourishing one, which my Father had. He is a man of reflective mind and elegant talent. He possesses learning in a greater degree than any of the family, excepting myself. His manners are grave, and hued over with a tender sadness. In his moral character he approaches every way nearer to perfection than any man ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... was the reflective rejoinder. "We used to be fairly chummy in the old Ann Arbor days, Evan, and yet I never, until a few days ago, knew or guessed that Senator Blount ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... His Word," said John Campbell, reverently. "It is the best of teachers. The generations to whom Scotland owes everything, had no other book. It made her men calm, reflective, courageous unto death. It made her women gentle, faithful, pure, ideal. I remember my mother, Allan; she came from the same school. Her soul lived so much in the Book, that I am sure if an angel had ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... civilised countries. Lost, not in the day-dreams of romance, but in the depths and amongst the mazes of science, it was but seldom that these men of the study and the library found leisure and nerve to escape from seclusion, and to take their share of the duties of active life in which their less reflective brethren were feverishly engaged. And when they attempted the competition, their failure was signal. They presented an extraordinary exhibition of awkward genius and blundering sagacity, and exposed themselves at once to the painful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... great opportunity of altering my answer, if there was cause. So took a hackney and home, and after supper made my wife to read them all over, wherein she is mighty useful to me; and I find them all evasions, and in many things false, and in few, to the full purpose. Little said reflective on me, though W. Pen and J. Minnes do mean me in one or two places, and J. Minnes a little more plainly would lead the Duke of York to question the exactness of my keeping my records; but all to no purpose. My mind is mightily pleased by this, if I can but get time to have a copy taken of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... only wonder, after all that has occurred, how it has been possible for me to succeed. Certainly, this success has not been due to any vigorous exercise of virtue on my part, but solely to the existence of that cool, reflective reason which lay perdue beneath all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... reality of the changes should not be obscured by the lack of objects on exhibit. Even so, some of the related equipment survived. For example, the centrifuge used in the butterfat test, discovered in 1890 by Stephen M. Babcock, survived in several forms. Manure spreaders and tree sprayers, reflective of advances in biochemistry, also survived. But these only suggest the more important biological control activities for which these machines and tools served merely as agents ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... Nor did he really belong to this novel, quick, variegated, involved world which was so pleased with its own excitement and entanglement. He was the child of a world which was then passing away, out of which life was fading, which was tired like Obermann, and sought peace in reflective solitudes. Sometimes he felt, as in The New Age, the pleasure of the coming life of the world, but he was too weary to share in it, and he claimed quiet. But chiefly he saw the disturbance, the unregulated life; and, unable to realise ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... two of them strangers to Mary, but the third she recognized as one of the teachers in her old "school"—a thoughtful looking man well past middle age, with a long grey moustache and reflective eyes. "Mr. Edsol, isn't ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... reflective turn of mind, the prudent management of the thoughts is one of the principal means towards the proper government of the temper. As some insects assume the colour of the plant they feed on, so do the thoughts ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... was original and reflective, he had no particular talent. His excellence lay in criticism and observation, often profound, on what came to him every day, and he was valueless in the literary market. A talent of some kind is necessary to genius if it is to be heard. ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Tennyson were far more sensitive than he. Suffering began to interest him when the wail passed into the fierceness of vindictive passion, as in The Confessional, or into the outward calm of a self-subjugated spirit, as in Any Wife to any Husband, or A Woman's Last Word; or into reflective and speculative, if bitter, retrospect, as in The Worst of It or James Lee's Wife. And happiness, equally,—even the lover's happiness,—needed, to satisfy Browning, to have some leaven of challenging disquiet; the lover must have something to fear, or something to forgive, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... could evolve. And the author of this tape extrapolated from there. A normal telepathic reception will be accompanied, by a slight feedback. A completely black body, however, will neither radiate nor feed back. It merely absorbs energy and, unless it's super-imposed on a reflective background, it leaves no trace. Since nothing in nature other than a telepathic mind can reflect telepathy, no background would survive for long." He ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... recollection of her children. They must not bear the weight of this great sorrow in the days of their tender youth, lest the hopefulness and energy they would certainly need in after life should be discouraged and disheartened out of them. Edward is naturally too reflective; he dwells too much on his loss, and evidently begins to ponder already how so many children are to be taken care of without a father. Sensitive Mary feels too deeply the shadow of the cloud which has come over her home; her face reflects back her ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... thing! She ain't six years old, an' she's never been anywhere alone. Do you s'pose I'm goin' to send her a mile to that store?" Mrs. Lennox's tone was full of vehement indignation, but her eyes still met Aunt Maria's with that doubtful and reflective expression. ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... harmony might come home to its inventor as a rich surprise. The reflective historian will find it less[12] surprising, for he will suspect that the applications were in view from the start. What was Leibniz thinking of when the new principle flashed upon him? What was he ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... her friends had all left her. I lay neglected on a sofa, and the pretty girl's brow became thoughtful. Of a sudden she was aroused from a brown study—reflective mood, perhaps, would be a more select phrase—by the unexpected appearance of young Thurston. There was a sort of "Ah! have I caught you alone!" expression about this adventurer's eye, even while he was making his bow, that struck me. I looked for great events, nor was ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... is possible, others maintain that, on many fields, it undoubtedly is the case. It is claimed that, generally speaking, woman is endowed with qualities that man is deficient in, and vice versa: the male method of reasoning is reflective and vigorous, woman's, on the contrary, distinguishes itself by swiftness of perception and quickness of execution. Certain it is that woman finds her way more quickly in complicated situations, and has more tact than man. Ellis, who gathered vast materials upon this ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the masters here," was the reply. "One cannot afford to pack useless truck over the trail. In a place such as this the mind is naturally reflective, and one craves for things that are ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... corner, stood for a moment in talk, and then went away together. Sam found himself beginning to wonder about the meetings. In the year since he had walked out of the Chicago office his mind had grown more and more reflective. Little things—a smile on the lips of an ill-clad old man mumbling and hurrying past him on the street, or the flutter of a child's hand from the doorway of a farmhouse—had furnished him food for hours of thought. Now he watched with interest ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... walkers from the heat of the summer's sun. It was Aminta's favorite retreat, and thither she came in the morning to paint her sisters, the white Bengal roses, the red cactus and the graceful clematides, which surrounded her charming retreat. There in the evening, pensive and reflective, the young girl suffered her glance to stray over the vast horizon of the sea gilded by the sun's expiring rays. On the day we speak of, Maulear found her reading, or rather seeming to read, for her book rested on her knee, her ivory brow supported by her hand. Her eyes, lifted up to heaven, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Most of the time we are very much absorbed in busy, outward-looking activity, overwhelmed with engagements and hurry and worry; and then in the midst of this active life there stands the chapel with its summons to us to pause and give the reflective life its chance. That is one of the chief offices of religion in this preposterously busy age. Religion gives one at least a chance to stop and let God speak to him. It sends the multitudes away and takes one up into the solitude of the soul's ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe in the garden. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... John of Gaunt were repeated by Shakespeare with little modulation at that time of his life when his reflective power was at its ripest. The Queen of Britain, Cymbeline's wife, is the personage in whose mouth Shakespeare sets, not perhaps quite appropriately, the latest message in regard to patriotism that he is known to have delivered. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... the smallness of human life, of human aims and efforts, of human emotions, was occupying the busy brain behind his reflective eyes. The scene before him, upon which he had so often looked, never failed to remind him of the greatness of that which lay beyond the ken of man. Somehow it exalted his thoughts to planes to which no association ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Reflective Faculties. (34) Comparison. (35) Causality. The judgment of the phrenologist is determined by the size of the brain in general, and by the size of the organs that have been formulated, and these are estimated ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... after Billy posts his warnin's, an' he's still musin' over 'em mighty reflective, when along projects a Mexican with a pair of burros he's packin' freight on. The Mexican's goin' by the notices witbout payin' the least heed tharto. But this don't do Billy, an' he stands ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... great American poet. His poetry is chiefly reflective and descriptive, and it is remarkable for its elevation, simplicity, and moral earnestness. He lacks dramatic power and skill in narration. Calmness and restraint, the lack of emotional intensity, are also evident in his greatest work. His depths of space are vast, but windless. In The ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Ridiculous, Lee decided, trying to make up his mind whether he might continue playing or return, beaten by November, to the clubhouse. In the end, with numb fingers, he picked up his ball, and walked slowly back over the empty course. The wind, now, was behind him, and increasingly comfortable he grew reflective: ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over and above practically useful efforts." Does it not follow that when we make the poet spend all his energy in the practically useful effort of running to fires, we prevent him from enjoying the very advantage which made man a reflective being, to say ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... son. Like all children, he was imitative, so had commenced very early to make a collection of insects, and this was sufficient to give him a precocious taste for natural history; but in his character he was earnest and reflective, and very eager for knowledge. Sumichrast took pleasure in the boy's intelligence, and often amused himself by arguing with him. From the flashes of childish humor which he would display on such occasions, my friend sometimes gave him the ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... been said that the work is singularly deficient in sustained choruses. That is true, if we are comparing it with the choruses of Handel's oratorios. But Haydn's style is entirely different from that of Handel. His choruses are designed on a much less imposing scale. They are more reflective or descriptive, much less dramatic. It was not in his way "to strike like a thunderbolt," as Mozart said of Handel. The descriptive effects which he desired to introduce into his orchestration made it necessary that he should throw ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... judgment thwarted, our humanity outraged. But "The Spagnoletto" is, nevertheless, a remarkable production, and pitched in another key from anything the writer has yet given us. Heretofore we have only had quiet, reflective, passive emotion: now we have a storm and sweep of passion for which we were quite unprepared. Ribera's character is charged like a thunder-cloud with dramatic elements. Maria Rosa is the child of her ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, and the light in the little room brightened slowly. Pilch's face was reflective. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... to have passed through those phases of belief and unbelief —those wild enthusiasms, to be rejected later in life—which generally fall to the lot of young men of talent. Perhaps his reasoning and reflective powers were developed unusually early, so that he sowed his mental wild oats in his boyhood. At any rate, in his garret in 1819 he was the same Balzac that we know in later life. Large-minded and far-seeing—except about his business concerns—he ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... such confidence be cultivated? Mainly by cultivating the habit of turning first to self when reflective thought is required. It is presupposed that we must consult the library and the world about us for raw facts of various kinds, for historical events, scientific data, views of men, descriptions, etc.; but when our own thought is wanted on a topic with which we are ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... at the Melbourne, pompously furnished, and bare of all things that make a room reflective of personality, Mrs. Swink and her daughter were awaiting me on my arrival, and the moment I met the former all the perversity of which I am possessed rose up within me, and for the latter I was conscious of sympathy, based ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... life which bears the name of utilitarianism—the theory which regards pleasure or profit as the aim of man. In its most independent form Hedonism can hardly be said to exist now as a reasoned theory. Carried out to its extreme consequences it reduces man to a mere animal. Hence a type of reflective egoism has taken the place of animal gratification, and the idea of ulterior benefit has succeeded to that of ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... nephews. He presented them separately to the departments and the army as in the direct line of inheritance. This scene must have produced a profound impression upon the younger child, Louis Napoleon, who was so thoughtful, reflective, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way to an impulse contains a slight element of the mischievous or ridiculous; whence, for this reason too, the pleasant is also the comical. In fact, most of the pleasures of highly complex and reflective ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... the Brain," hoping that I could train one side of my head to do these outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties. For Richard Greenough once told me, that, in studying for the statue of Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If you will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has repeated this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is the portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of Poor Richard. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Rod was actually a giant balloon eight thousand feet in diameter, one-half "silvered" with a greenish reflective surface inside that reflected only that light that could be utilized by the ruby rods at its long focal center; and that absorbed the remainder of the incident solar radiation, dumping it through to its black outside surface, and on into the vastness of space. This half of the big ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a nation's politics by absorbing such morbid collections and qualities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who will never get over it. Our answer is general, and is involved in the scope and letter of this essay. We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government, (having, of course, provided for the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and companion the old woman had, was her gray cat. Now, the cat was a middle-aged cat: she had arrived at a time of life when people grow reflective; and she sat by the hearth and reflected very often. What did she reflect about? That is rather a long story. You must know, then, that a few leagues from the old woman's hut, on the other side ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... call it that, either," says Hubbs, runnin' his long fingers reflective through his heavy mop of wavy hair. "I was station agent and dispatcher out at Kayuse Creek the only time we met up—and of all the forsaken, dreary, one-mule towns along the line that was the worst. I'd been there a year and a half, with no signs of ever gettin' out, and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... and the sides, and the moustache, hanging straight down with an effect recalling the mouth of a seal, was plenteous and defiant—a moustache of character, contradicting the full placidity of the badly shaved chin. Darius Clayhanger had a habit, when reflective or fierce, of biting with his upper teeth as far down as he could on the lower lip; this trick added emphasis to the moustache. He stood, his feet in their clumsy boots planted firmly about sixteen inches apart, his elbows sticking out, and his head bent ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... audiences. He spoke without notes and apparently without effort. There was no rhetoric, no declamation, no display. As one listened, one seemed to hear the genuine thoughts of a singularly clever and reflective man, who had strong prejudices of his own in favour of religion, authority, and property, but was quite unswayed by the prejudices of other people. The general tone of his thought was sombre. Lord Lytton described, with curious exactness, the "massive temple," the "large slouching shoulder," ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... though violent and exceptional in its character. However sudden the occasion from which it arises, it results from antecedent conditions, the general tendency of which should be manifest long before to the statesmen of a nation, and to at least the reflective portion of the people. In such anticipation, such forethought, as in the affairs of common life, lies the best hope of the best solution,—peace by ordinary diplomatic action; peace by timely agreement, while men's heads ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... face was full of trouble. There was a little wrinkle between her reflective brown eyes, and she drew in her under lip after a way ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... and the result has been a biography combining the attractiveness of romance with the reliableness of history, and which, taking a place midway between the 'frescoed galleries' of Thierry, and the 'philosophic watch-tower of Guizot,' has all the pictorial brilliancy of the one, with much of the reflective speculation of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... out very well, because they relieved each other; but the children, having no relief at all, exhibited decided symptoms of weariness and care. The unthinking part of the parishioners laughed at all this, but the more reflective portion of the inhabitants abstained from expressing any opinion on the subject until that of the curate ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... had presented to his regard a series of scenes well calculated to arouse a thoughtful mind to consideration of the deepest problems, both of politics and religion. What must have been the "long, long thoughts" of a youth, naturally reflective and acutely observant, as he witnessed the break-up of the old order in '48 and the years that followed. In the most impressionable age of life he was driven to contemplate a Europe in solution; the crash ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... farther was, as Cromwell hints, the association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain. How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with other enemies. I ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... I don't understand why you should have "nothing to write about" because you have been in bed. Surely you must have accumulated all sorts of reflective ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it?" said Mrs. Clowes, framing the young face between her hands as Isabel rose up kneeling before her. In the quivering apple-tree shadow Isabel's eyes were very dark, and penetrating and reflective too, as if she had just undergone one of those transitions from childhood to womanhood which are the mark and the charm of her variable age. Laura was puzzled by her judgment of Lawrence Hyde, so keen, yet so wide of the truth as Laura saw it: "excitable" was the last thing that Laura ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... All you workpeople are doing it. Is it not time to think about these things and stop the indiscriminate production of human beings, whose lives you cannot properly maintain? Ought you not to act more like reflective creatures and less like brutes? As if breeding were the whole object of life! How much better for you, my friend, if you had never married at all, than to have had the worry of a wife and children ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... have studied the dynamics of communication and the process by which it occurs are convinced that the monological principle is contradictory to the nature of communication, and as a method is the least effective. Reflective observation of our own learning indicates that communication is most effective when we become a part of the process and meet the message with our own content. Furthermore, the monological principle is not one that was used by our Lord. ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... very friendly toward her. He could not help pitying her. Ukridge, he thought, was a very good person to know casually, but a little of him, as his former headmaster had once said in a moody, reflective voice, went a very long way. To be bound to him for life was not the ideal state for a girl. If he had been a girl, he felt, he would as soon ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... put over my painting-room door, "Love, solitude, and painting."' On the last day of the year, according to his wont, Haydon sums up his feelings and impressions of the past twelve months. 'I don't know how it is, but I get less reflective as I get older. I seem to take things as they come without thought. Perhaps being married to my dearest Mary, and having no longer anything to hope in love, I get more content with my lot, which, God knows, is rapturous beyond imagination. Here ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... as from caves, full of a fiery impatient light. His thin lips were never quite without a smile; but it was not a smile in which any pleasure was. He walked slowly, not hurrying, like most of the passengers. He had a reflective look, as if pondering many things. He came up to me suddenly, without introduction or preliminary, and took me by the arm. 'What object had you in talking of these antiquated institutions?' he said. And I saw in his mind the gleam of the thought, which seemed to be ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... of life; the instinct of workmanship acts impulsively and may be satisfied, provisionally, with a proximate purpose. It is only as the apprehended ulterior futility of a given line of action enters the reflective complex of consciousness as an element essentially alien to the normally purposeful trend of the life process that its disquieting and deterrent effect on the consciousness ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... in ages so remote that no record of them survives save our heritage of labor well achieved, some pastoral savage, more reflective and less practical than his brethren, took to star-gazing and noting in his memory certain strange coincidences. Doubtless he was chidden by his tribal leaders who were hard-headed men of affairs, skilled ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... silence, that reflective silence which always overtook him when he found himself one corner of this strange triangle. He could talk to Myra alone. He was never at a loss for words with his wife. Together, they ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a child, but seemed to have matured suddenly into a woman of calm and reflective character, as well as of ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... a touching spectacle, as, indeed, it always is to the reflective mind, to see the new Judge sitting among the wrecks, like "Marius among the Ruins." Fine subject for Sir FREDERICK, P.R.A., ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... degree confidence and respect; and the heroism of the chivalrous ages has entered her soul without taking from it any thing of her sex's softness. The military talents of the duke are universally respected, and his lively and reflective conversation continually brings to our recollection that he was formed by the great Frederic. It is by his own and his mother's reputation that the most distinguished men of learning have been attracted to Weimar, and by them Germany, for the first time, has possest a literary ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... phenomena of ascetic philosophy and practice. Each school or tendency developed its own mores to treat the problems of life in its own way. An ascetic policy never is a primary product of the "ways" in which unreflecting men meet the facts of life. It is reflective and derived. It is a secondary stage of faith built on experience and reflection. It is, therefore, dogmatic. It must be sustained by faith in the fundamental pessimistic conviction. It never can be verified by experience. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... almost classic in outline; features highly intellectual; a piercing, black eye, capable of expressing the fiercest and the tenderest passion and emotion, and a commanding figure and impressive stage address. In his transition from the quiet and reflective passages of a part to fierce and violent outbreaks of passion, his sudden and impetuous manner had in it something of that electrical force and power which made the elder Booth so celebrated, and called up afresh to the memory of men of the preceding generation the presence, voice, and manner ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... their functions may lie, there is to be seen among them a really inspiring amount of searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their profession. The renovation of nations begins always at the top, among the reflective members of the State, and spreads slowly outward and downward. The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at present show in striving to enlighten and strengthen themselves is an index of ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... a-thinking on the same thing, sir, when you began a- speaking," observed Jupp thoughtfully, scratching his head in his reflective way as he stood before the vicar cap in hand at the door of the study, where the conference was being held. "I fancied you didn't like me taking him down to the river, or I'd have taught him to swim long ago, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... for awhile master of his powers and his knowledge; no fatal divorce had yet taken place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; he writes readily even for the public, without labor, without affectations. Eight years later the reflective faculty has outgrown his control; composition, which represents the practical side of the intellectual life, has become difficult and painful to him, and he has developed what he himself calls "a wavering manner, born of doubt ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this mighty square, with its enchanting splendor, its haunting romance, its brilliant if pathetic history. Light, everywhere light; scintillating, dancing, swinging light! Spars and lances of light upon the shivering waters, red and yellow and white! Light, the reflective radiance of jewels and happy eyes! Light, breaking against the pink and white marbles, the columns of porphyry, malachite, basalt, and golden mosaics! Let the would-be traveler dream of it never so well; he will ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... instinct for the cultivation of patience and self-denial —patience in a fruitless activity, and self-denial in the eternal act of mastication without swallowing. It is no more related to these virtues than it is to the habit of the reflective cow in chewing her cud. The cow would never chew gum. The explanation is a more philosophical one, and relates to a great modern social movement. It is to strengthen and develop and make more masculine the lower jaw. The critic who says that this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... individuality pervades and colors the whole collection. The defect of the serious stories is, that character is introduced, not as thinking, but as the illustration of thought. The persons are ghostly, with a sad lack of flesh and blood. They are phantasmal symbols of a reflective and imaginative analysis of human passions and aspirations. The dialogue, especially, is bookish, as though the personages knew their speech was to be printed, and were careful of the collocation and rhythm of their words. The author throughout is evidently more interested ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... (for though he was not a very young man in 1818, the date of the earliest of the Wordsworth papers, he was a young writer), that of practised and unrestrained vigour (for 1832 represents about his literary zenith), and that of reflective decadence, for by 1842 he had ceased to write habitually, and was already bowed down by mental ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the blood he had sprung from. His first wedlock was impolitic, and this unpopular; and both were hasty and self-willed, and destructive of all reputation for that dignified prudence, which his elevation to the regency of the most reflective and enlightened nation in Europe demanded for its example and its welfare. This injudicious conduct announced too much imperfection of intellect, not to give every advantage to his political rival the bishop of Winchester, his uncle, who was now struggling for the command ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... may have been clouded towards the last by the mists of disappointment, but to us admiring moderns he is all sunshine. Not the fiery sunshine of summer, but the genial, dignified light of an autumn afternoon when nature seems in most reflective mood. For there was nothing impetuous or ardent in the composition of this good-humoured philosopher; and while he railed so well at the petty sins and vanities of the England in which he dwelt, the satire had naught of venom, malice, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... points and crater pits. The remaining 4,400,000 square miles are mainly occupied by mountains of the most extraordinary character. Owing partly to roughness of the surface and partly to more brilliant reflective power, the mountainous regions of the moon appear bright in comparison with the ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... that a perfect delusion is to be aimed at,—an opinion which needs no fresh confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr. Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to illustrate its quality ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... expression; paint the beauty which is indistinguishable from nature but not identical with Nature. They make us see that not she, red in tooth and claw, but that intangible and supernal something-more, is what gives her the cleansing bath of loveliness. No reflective or imaginative person needs to be greatly troubled, therefore, by any purely mechanical or materialistic conception of the universe. They who would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Ned, rubbing his shoulder in a reflective sort of way. "I always thought it was something like that. But, at the time I put it down to an explosion, and let it ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... in a reflective mood, and as he pointed these things out to me, made some sage and pertinent remarks about the peculiar features of some industries which required large expenditures to operate, all of which were useless in a comparatively ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... communicate about those regions. Should anyone ask, "How can I accept on trust what the occultist tells me, being myself as yet unable to see it?"—such an objection would be groundless, for it is perfectly possible to arrive through mere reflective thinking at the sure conviction that the ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... rule—nay, this in itself is almost sufficient for a good style—is this, that the author should have something to say. Ah! this implies a great deal. The neglect of this rule is a fundamental characteristic of the philosophical, and generally speaking of all the reflective authors in Germany, especially since the time of Fichte. It is obvious that all these writers wish to appear to have something to say, while they have nothing to say. This mannerism was introduced by the pseudo-philosophers of the Universities and may be discerned everywhere, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of being an alien in Dublin had persisted all the time that he had lived there. The Dublin people were gregarious and garrulous, and he was solitary and reflective. Marsh and Galway had taken him to houses where people met and talked without stopping, and much conversation with miscellaneous, casually-encountered people bored Henry. He had no gift for ready talk and he disliked crowds and he was unable to carry on a conversation with ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... proceeds, in both cases, from a reflective deliberative, eminently deliberative, eminently conscious, designing mind; and that the coincidence which is manifest not in the design only, and in the structure, but in the detail to the minutest points ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Red Riding-Hood on the way or come on Snow White and her seven dwarfs, that is only because you must have taken the wrong turning after you came through the kissing-gate at the bottom of Lovers' Lane. I am a native of Cotterham, and in my more reflective moments I wonder why such an idyllic place should have produced anything so unromantic as myself, His Majesty's Deputy Assistant Acting Inspector for All Sorts of Unexpected Explosives. Cotterham still has a large place in my affections, and it gave me a considerable shock ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... this rough, sullen boy—as she had known him—pick up this delicate and swift perception, this reflective judgment, and this odd felicity of expression? It was not possible that it was in him while he was the companion of her husband's servants or the recognized "chum" of the scamp Hooker. No. But if HE could have changed like this, why not Susy? Mrs. Peyton, in the conservatism of her sex, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... think David Cairns simulated that fine touch, about discovering through his friend, what damage New York was doing him?" Kate Wilkes' manner was lightly reflective. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... shrugging good-natured shoulders, spoke of the work that lay before him on the burning plains until the terrible summer should drag itself to a close. We had vanquished the details and were smoking in comparative silence one night on the veranda, when he said in his slow reflective way; ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... at Peter while a queer, reflective light gathered in her eyes. At last she said soberly: "Well, I don't know, Peter, that you should make them so very personal ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to do his bidding. She saw that she had gone far enough. His mood had changed from a reflective to an angry one, and Victor Lamont was a man to fear when ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... English writers to base their political philosophy exclusively upon Anglo-Saxon experience and examples: yet it is strange to find so striking a lesson so lightly touched by the wisest, widest, most reflective, and best-informed, among the political teachers ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... said Poppy, in a reflective tone; "they are all in the dining-room as snug as possible over their high tea. They have shrimps for tea, and a wonderful new kind of paste that Aunt Flint brought in to-day. It's called Gentlemen's Relish, and eats well on hot toast, and I made a lot. Oh, my! won't the ladies go in for ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... a calm, slate-coloured sea—sea that more than any other sort of sea produces the reflective melancholy which makes wonderful the faces of fishermen. How that brief voyage symbolized for me the mysterious movement of humanity! We converged from the four quarters of the universe, passed together an hour, helpless, in somewhat inimical curiosity concerning each other, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... on the face she turned up to him, made an impression on his mind that stayed with him through life. It seemed to him that he had arrived at a kind of culmination, a starting point, and that all the vague shadowy uncertainties that had, in reflective moments, flitted through his mind, were to be brushed away by some act, some word, from the lips of this woman. With a rush he realised how consistently he had been thinking of her and how enormously he had been counting on her falling in with his plans, and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... quite as well as the sun does. On the occasion here referred to the little jackass stood apart with head hanging down toward the ground, silent and unmoving, and apparently revolving in his own mind something concerning the geology of the Dog Star. He could be a most reflective little beast upon occasion. The boys sat together on a knoll, their heads close together, engaged in earnest and animated and sometimes loud-voiced conversation. There was occasion for their lively interest. They were discussing the Fourth of July. They were ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... grow forth,' show, in the first place, that the Self is the agent in the independent activity which is preceded by the Self's reflection; and, in the second place, that it is the material cause also, since the words 'May I be many' intimate that the reflective desire of multiplying itself has the inward Self for ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... to her, much as she would catch him sleeping when she read to him—but she awoke with a start and a blush at her forgetfulness, which he never did. He was not a man to brood over these things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head, he "gave it up". How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It was extraordinary that the child he ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke |
